


homecoming

by EvaLark



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, Gotham (TV)
Genre: F/M, One-Shot, Series Finale, Some angst, and this happened, basically I was curious what Bruce was up to those ten years, canon-compliant spec fic, hints of Bruce/Selina, of course there's angst it's Batman, the league shows up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 03:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29057787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EvaLark/pseuds/EvaLark
Summary: When Gotham needs me, I will return.At first, it’s a battle to get himself to believe it.a.k.a. the missing story of Bruce Wayne in the Gotham (Fox) series finale. Largely spec. One-shot.
Relationships: Selina Kyle & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	homecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Finished watching the series finale of the absolute insanity that is the Fox show Gotham and was instantly inspired to write introspective Bruce, the prodigal son coming home. Ergo, this.

**homecoming**

_When Gotham needs me, I will return._

At first, it’s a battle to get himself to believe it.

He’s had so many damn failures, messed up so many times. It properly sickens him with shame as he mulls it all over for a week, then two, then ten, slinking through slums and smoky, grimy bars, clubs of poor repute and even poorer stocks of alcohol. It’s not the good stuff from back home, the top shelf gin and vodka Barbara liked to keep in her bar, but he drinks it anyway and throws up and feels shameful and guilty and then does it all over again as he recalls those long months he’d lost his mind entirely, how he’d spat in Alfred’s face and thrown himself into the drinks and sex and rave party lights like the billionaire brat he’d tried for the first time to be.

And here he is, wandering from one saloon to the next as every disaster he’s ever been responsible for plays on repeat inside his buzzing head. He’d left Gotham for a new start, abandoned the only home he’s ever known, and he’s already fucking it up splendidly. Bruce Wayne, Gotham’s golden boy and class-A moron.

He gets a wakeup call when he finally runs out of cash.

Suddenly, it’s not only a matter of principle, but survival to do what he’d traveled halfway across the world to do: get better. 

He thinks of Gotham and of the people he’s left behind; he thinks of the reconstruction well underway and the miracle of a city that simply refuses to die. He grips his newfound resolution with clawing hands and eventually those shameful, snarling, mocking memories dull in the face of his rapidly more urgent realization that in order to _get better_ , he needs food and shelter and a job and _information_. 

He learns how to be homeless (he keeps remembering his little stint with Selina, until he trains himself into not thinking of it at all); he learns when to slink in the shadows and when to step into the spotlight of a dirty stage, slinging punches in exchange for enough money for his next meal - and for whispered, stuttering conversations in back alleys in which he attempts the local language and bravely endeavors to find out _what next? who should I look for? where can someone like me go to fight, to meditate, to learn?_

He trains with the very best he can find, and he stays alive, and then he figures out where to go next to make it all worth the trouble.

He goes to Moscow and enjoys a brief stint with the Russian mob. He spends months in Shanghai and then Tokyo, as a mute enforcer he’s pretty sure the Triad and the yakuza only hire because he’s white and mysterious and always gets the job done (what they don’t know, non-lethal wounds and one-way plane tickets to Europe and silent _mercy_ , won’t hurt them). He goes to Bhutan, where he ends up deep in an international gold smuggling ring, of all things, and after two years of dirty work and climbing the ranks and hardening to the realization that it’s _bodies, live human bodies, unwilling bodies_ they use to transport their gold he cuts enough strings for the entire thing to come crashing down before he promptly fucks off to the Himalayas and spends most of the next year at a monastery, meditating the guilt away. The road to hell may be paved with good intentions, but he’s walked through hell - two years of blood and secrets and screams - in pursuit of the noblest of intentions, and it had _worked_ , and sometimes he can still feel the weight of those two years drying warm and heavy on his skin.

He leaves Bhutan with a dimmer view of humanity and a brighter, burning urge to do something about it.

➣ ➣ ➣

Five years after leaving Gotham, he ends up back in Nepal.

The white-peaked mountains welcome him back like a long-lost friend. He’s seen mountains like these before, of course, even before stepping off that barge five years ago - he’s a billionaire heir who spent his summers in Switzerland, for crying out loud - but now he’s older, he’s changed, he’s carving his own path with nothing more than a duffle bag and an idea and five years of darkness and survival under his belt, and it makes all the difference.

This time around, he finds what he’s looking for before the month is up.

He stumbles upon the factions of the League that stayed buried and true, that did not travel to Gotham in search of the Demon’s Head, did not align themselves with Barbara Kean all the way to their unfortunate demise at the hands of a grieving daughter. He shows up at what one could consider their doorstep and summarily demands an audience, pulling the Demon’s Heir card with honestly very little hesitation. He enters their true home, a fortress, a kingdom buried beneath the mountains, and he doesn’t see the sunlight again for a very long time.

They teach him how to fight like the ancients did, to develop an awareness of every muscle, the merest brush of moving air. They teach him the proper remedies for a bleeding cut, a bruised rib, a dislocated arm; they teach him to master his body. 

They show him how to bend darkness to his will, how to dissolve into the shadows, how to instill fear from within a cloak of shade. They let him watch their interrogations and rituals and he learns well the twisting passages of the human mind, how to navigate that maze until it’s time to start tearing it down; they teach him terror, when to wield it like a scalpel and when to crash down with all the force of a battering ram.

No one questions his right to be there. He thinks maybe he’d earned it long ago, regardless of whether or not he’d known it at the time. 

They transform him into something he probably should’ve seen coming years ago, ever since he trained on top of the mountain he now resides beneath (needles and mind games notwithstanding the Sensei had been so very right, after all). They take his soft edges and the last vestiges of baby fat and cut them away, sharpening, honing, until he’s razors and bat wings and silent, deadly blades. They give him what he wants and take away his weakness in return; he is a weapon, he is strength and skill and frozen fury; he is the blunt force of a bomb and the whispering edge of a knife and the chill fog of fear all wrapped up in one, the perfect, lethal package. He is an avenger, a protector, a dark knight atop not a black steed but a mighty bird of prey, and one day he wakes up and knows without a shadow of a doubt that it is time to go home.

So he does.

➣ ➣ ➣

He wonders whether they’ve thought about him, back in Gotham. Jim and Lee and Alfred, Bullock and Harper, Selina - everyone. To be fair, he doesn’t think about them much himself - less as the years go on, mostly passing thoughts when he’s resting or in random, opportune moments. Wondering what Alfred would think of Tibetan cuisine, or how indignant Jim would grow in the face of the human rights violations Bruce encounters every day in dark alleyways and in filthy cargo ports, in the world with which he questionably and irreversibly ingratiates himself. 

It’s amazing what time and distance can do for you, how they can open your eyes.

To combat evil, you must know it - intimately. He’d had it all wrong all those years ago, when he’d lost his mind over the impossible sight of immortal blood on his soft hands. He’d been afraid, merely a boy clinging to societal notions of morality, blinded by the paralyzing fear that the something inside him that had fractured with the feel of knife cleaving flesh could never, ever be fixed. 

He knows better now. He goes and gets himself properly shattered, seeks out those able to grip the fractures with practiced hands and pull him apart; he lets them fill him up with darkness because what better way is there to master the shadows than to become one himself?

However -

There’s a small, flickering flame deep inside him, a vestige of the boy he used to be, a treasure, a principle; he doesn’t let them cut this one out. He protects it with everything he has.

He’s a walking contradiction, he thinks tiredly as he boards the private jet on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, a duffle on his back and a small, growing giddiness inside of him because it’s been ten years and he’s going _home._

➣ ➣ ➣

The new headquarters of Wayne Enterprises has been six years and nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in the making. Tall and sleek and nothing like he’d ever dreamed of, it’s the first thing he sees when he lowers the window cover and takes his first peek at the city that is still his home, all these years later. 

It’s a glittering tower with the first letter of his surname on it, standing tall and proud, glass sparkling in the sun. It looks like a beacon, a symbol. It looks like hope.

The sight spurs him into an action long overdue and he reaches for the laptop that’s been tucked away the entirety of the flight. He marvels, just for an instant, at the convenience of high-speed WiFi at one’s fingertips - because right now, he’s a billionaire on a private plane, but the fact of the matter is that he hasn’t been a billionaire in _so long_ \- and as of ten minutes before landing, Bruce Wayne owns a controlling stake in Wayne Enterprises and has a meeting scheduled with the entire board for three business days following his welcome home gala.

He wonders if his father would be proud. 

He hopes he is.

➣ ➣ ➣

It is so fucking good to see Alfred again.

“Master Bruce,” the butler says at the private tarmac, standing ramrod straight next to the waiting car, a sight for sore, long-deprived eyes. “It’s good to see you. My my, you’ve grown.”

“Good to be home, Alfred,” and Bruce grins for the first time in ages. “Just Bruce is fine, you know.”

Alfred shrugs, eyes twinkling - his crow’s feet are more pronounced and his hair has gotten a bit whiter, but it’s the same Alfred Pennyworth that Bruce has always known, and yeah, he’s _home._ “Well, you know me, Master Bruce. Old habits die hard.”

He gets taken around the new manor before dinnertime. It’s just as vast and tasteful as the home he grew up in, but there are distinct differences that make it new - the kitchen is more modern, the foyer more spacious and bright, and they have an actual gym now instead of the old sitting room Alfred had repurposed as a sparring room way back when he’d first decided to teach Bruce how to throw a punch, forever ago. The greenhouse is bigger and cleaner and lovelier, brimming with fruits and vegetables and flowers - Alfred’s been spending plenty of time in there, and it shows - and the redesigned master bedroom is _his_ now, whatever had been recovered of his parents’ belongings stowed safely away in another wing. There’s a ballroom sitting over the area where the main sitting room had once been, the room that had been invaded a million times, the room where Ra's al Ghul had trespassed and Jeremiah had waxed poetic and Selina had gotten shot, and Bruce looks now at the marble floors and crystal chandeliers and tall, narrow window panes reflected in wall-length mirrors and thinks, _well, I’ll never be caught off guard here again._

Dinner is served in the new dining room, though he has Alfred sit down and eat cross corner to him - the man has never been just the family butler, and it’s not about to start now - and they catch up on Wayne Enterprises, Gotham, and just about everything Bruce has missed. They talk about the board of directors and the work Lucius is doing in renewable energies, churning out new tech leaps and bounds beyond Jeremiah’s battery of a decade ago. They talk about Jim’s work as commissioner and the bar Alfred and Harvey still frequent on a semi-regular basis, along with sporadic sightings of Ivy in the woods up north and other tidbits of news - Alfred gets a certain look in his eye when he brings up the notorious cat burglar nobody’s been able to catch, and Bruce promptly changes the subject - and then they clear the dishes and eat mint chocolate chip ice cream in the kitchen (Bruce just about laughs out loud when Alfred whips it out, and proceeds to savor it as if he hasn’t had ice cream in ten years because he _hasn’t_ ) and then they clear _those_ dishes and Alfred sits back and levels Bruce with a gaze he knows very well by now and, if he’s being honest, he’s missed like all hell.

“So, how was it?” Alfred asks.

Bruce doesn’t tell him everything, only enough to properly set up the speech he’d rehearsed on the plane ride home, enough to segue neatly into The Plan. When he finishes, Alfred just looks at him for a long while. 

“I thought you’d say something like that,” he finally says, lips curving into a smirk, and that’s how Bruce finds out about the new and improved lair beneath his house, courtesy of Alfred Pennyworth and Lucius Fox. 

He spends most of his first night home in ten years down there in those caverns, planning, exploring, _marveling_.

It’s a lot to take in.

And then Lucius comes over the next day with a knowing smile and a trunkload of proprietary stealth technology from Wayne R&D and Bruce sends up silent thanks for the two allies he’d been hoping beyond hope to win over to his side, for the knowledge now that they’d been there all along.

➣ ➣ ➣

He gets a ping from the natural history museum and he dons the suit for the first time, slinking through grimy streets and over grimier rooftops until he’s peeking through an all-too-conveniently placed window into the darkened chamber that he knows houses a rare diamond, an enormous five-hundred carat beauty that was transferred to the museum only a matter of days ago.

It’s not the diamond he’s there to see.

The infrared lasers do nothing to stop the figure in black, lithe curves and an acrobat’s build, slinking through the glowing red beams without a care in the world, like it’s child play. All the way right up to the case, removing the cowl and shaking out thick brown-gold hair; slicing right into the glass (are those _claws?_ ) and reaching inside, the fingers of a thief, cat burglar extraordinaire. 

She raises her face to the light and his heart catches in his throat.

➣ ➣ ➣

The universe has decided to toss him another unexpected reunion, it seems.

It’s hours before the Wayne Tower gala he’s already planning to skip when he puts the pieces together and takes off for a grimy industrial facility near the harbor. The GCPD showing up is a surprise - he’s lucky he got a good look at the schematics at all - and then everything stutters to a stop when they walk into the light, ghosts of his past manifesting as neatly if he’s summoned them.

He wonders if he has. He’s seen just about everything, at this point.

Jim Gordon and Vanessa Harper - he remembers liking Harper, her honesty and efficiency, her steadfast presence in the precinct, always on the side of right - well, they show up and he’s not quite ready _._ He panics upon first sight because it’s Jim, Jim, _Jim_ and that’s C4 right there strapped to the dead bodies, and he didn’t come all this way to see Jim blown up seconds after laying sight on him for the first time in ten years.

“I am not your enemy,” he says as he escapes upstairs, belatedly grateful that the voice modulator is on and working (god, is that what he sounds like? He’ll have to decide whether he likes it or not, _later_ ), and of course Jim follows because that’s what Jim does and god, the relief of it sinks into Bruce like the warmth of a winter fire.

Then Harper enters, and he’s stuck. “Don’t touch the bodies,” he blurts out, and then he’s tossing the smoke grenade and vanishing into the haze and crashing out through the window, grappling hook at the ready, swerving away into the night.

(He swings by the precinct later to confirm that they’d listened to him, being alive and walking and all, and unbidden he thinks that this _might be the start of a beautiful partnership._ )

➣ ➣ ➣

Bruce has always considered himself pretty smart, but it’s honestly a little ridiculous how short-sighted he is, sometimes. 

It’s ridiculous that, during his time away, he’s often imagined how much Alfred might have changed, whether his silvery hair might have gotten whiter, whether the familiar fondness in his eyes might have dampened with his absence (it hasn’t); how much Jim has changed being a father or whether he might have grown that mustache he’d mentioned once, over empty shot glasses in the Sirens bar a few weeks after reunification (he has and Bruce is a little miffed he's already shaved it off because apparently it'd looked ridiculous); how many of the cops in the GCPD he’d still recognize after ten long years away, practically a lifetime, how many rookies Jim will have to introduce him to and how many old-timers might look at him and still see the naive boy of so long ago. 

It’s ridiculous because for all his pondering, all the hypotheticals and projections and imaginings of home, he’s still only ever seen Selina Kyle as the girl he’d left behind. Shorter than him by a mile, stubborn and defiant with an attitude bigger than his entire world; short curls and big eyes and that small, precious smile he liked to believe she saved up just for him.

Standing on the tarmac in that black leather jacket she loves - had loved - too late to catch him, disbelief and betrayal gleaming in her eyes - 

He’d gotten a glimpse at the museum, but in the clear light of the gala that he’s currently spying on as if it’s not his own gala, as if it’s Alfred and not him they’re expecting up on that gilded stage, he catches sight of her and his breath stutters in his throat because he’s an idiot, he’s an utter _fool_ , he’s all grown up and he should’ve expected that she’d grow up, too.

He tracks her as she slinks among the guests, in her element and yet a glowing outlier, drawing his attention like a flickering flame. She is long curls and smooth curves, golden shimmers and gleaming highlights, dark-rimmed eyes and vitriol on her lips as she talks to Alfred.

“He doesn’t get to come back after ten years and act like nothing’s happened.” 

(He knows she’s right.)

“He needs to stay away.”

(He knows she’s right - he’s thought it a million times himself but it hurts like fucking hell, all the same.)

And oh, look, Barbara’s dyed her hair. It looks better in person than on television - of course he’s seen her on television, Gotham’s new Queen, young as ever, snatching up half the city’s new real estate and crafting herself a better legacy, business deals and million-dollar contracts as shrewd as the less-than-legal dealings she’d specialized in half a lifetime ago - and he watches as she intercepts Selina before joining her to go after Nygma. He sticks around long enough to ensure that the Mayor leaves alive and that Selina is safe (it was a trap set for Bruce, after all, and he will have no one’s blood on his hands, not tonight).

He finds out about the bombs from the massive wall of screens in the lair and only feels slightly guilty that he wasn’t there to help. It’s quickly overshadowed by the confirmation that it was Valeska, _Jeremiah fucking Valeska_ and yep, he’s going to have to hit the ground running, isn’t he?

➣ ➣ ➣

There are monsters in the dark, whispers on the streets and rumors in the air. He’s not surprised. It’s Gotham, after all, and this is what he’s been training for. This is why he left. 

This is why he got better.

He’s making his way across the rooftops of midtown when he manages to get on Nygma and Cobblepot’s tail; he pounces two blocks later and they have no idea what hits them. He almost laughs as he swoops down, immobilizes them, and ties the two shrieking men to the lamppost in short order, pretty as a Christmas present (is that a fucking _monocle_ ) - and if he takes personal joy in leaving them strung up like fish, well, it’s not like anyone else will know.

He expects things won’t always be so easy; he’ll take what he can get.

➣ ➣ ➣

He finds Barbara Lee Gordon dangling over a vat of chemicals as sickly green as the last time he was here and Jeremiah crouched on top of a bleeding Jim, and it’s a sick flash of deja vu as he lets the batarang fly, aiming with instinct trained and true and the heavy knowledge that nothing has changed, after all.

He had been right in leaving ten years ago, a foolish little boy with a weary soul and a stubborn spark of determination buried somewhere deep, deep down. He had been right in coming back, boy no more, spark given way to forged steel. 

He’s made the right choice.

➣ ➣ ➣

It’s not much of a homecoming in the end, but that’s just like Gotham, isn’t it?

Home for little more than seventy-two hours and he’s already saved Jim and Harper and little Barbara Lee, drawn blood from his old archnemesis, gift-wrapped Gotham’s two most wanted for the GCPD, and skipped out on his own gala. He’s going to have to properly reunite with his old friends at some point, and after that he’ll begin step two of The Plan (step one had been talking to Alfred and Lucius): transform into a normally functioning member of high society, returning from lofty jaunts abroad with a winning personality, a charming smile, and an even more charming bank account (or five, in his case). He can’t say he’s exactly looking forward to being perceived by all of Gotham as an insipid billionaire playboy, but… needs must, he supposes.

It’s been ten years in the making, The Plan - but no, it’s been longer than that, hasn’t it? Another day or three won’t hurt.

He tells Alfred to send his apologies to Jim - he’s going to be doing that a lot, he expects, but that’s alright, and then he dons the suit and takes off across rooftops until he finds _her._

“Do you have any idea what you did, just leaving?” she says, as if he hasn’t contemplated it endlessly, as if the answer hasn’t been scored into him by ten years of tears and blood and sweat. “You were all I had. And I know you wanted to protect me, but I didn’t want to be protected. I wanted _you._ ”

 _I wanted you too,_ he almost says. _I’m sorry I left you all alone. I missed you._

“Say something,” she pleads, and his heart softens at the sound of it. Only for her, only ever for her - it’s always been her, hasn’t it, from gunshots in the dark and pearls on the pavement all the way to that last party, glittering dress and black leather jacket, a cruel little letter, a blip on the tarmac as he turned his eyes away from his home, his city, his love.

“There was no other way, Selina. I had to go.”

The silence screams loud and then she’s speaking, her voice subdued. “So what happens now?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll never leave Gotham again.” It’s a promise he has every intention of keeping, and he hopes she hears the sincerity of it. He pauses. “Return the diamond.”

And he flees like the coward that he is before she can call him out on it, before he has to deal with the wrath that’s been a decade in coming. He’s conquered fear, he has, but he’s man enough to admit he’s not quite ready yet to face the hurt and fury of Selina Kyle.

He’s not quite sure when he ever will.

“Like hell,” drifts to him on the nighttime breeze and a small smile curves his lips. He’s changed and so has she, and he can’t deny the spike of adrenaline that thought brings - he’s going to have to stop her eventually, he knows, but not tonight, and he suspects it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

But he’s not distracted, not really. He’s got a city to save. Gotham needs someone, _something_ , and what they’ve gotten is him. He’ll be damned if he lets them down.

And so he makes his way across town, a shadow in the night, until he’s standing on a corner precipice overlooking the precinct. It’s not much of a view, but it’s his - his city, his home, his _life_ , and it means more than all the mountains of Asia, the teeming metropolises and underground fortresses and the world out there he’d traveled for ten long years, knowing all the while that this was his final destination.

He looks down, and something slots back into place at the sight - it’s Jim, Harvey, and Alfred, and they’re looking at him too, and he knows that what they see is not Bruce Wayne because right now, he’s not. He is a crusader wearing darkness as a cloak; he is shadows and steel, a defender of the innocent. He is Gotham’s, born and bred and reared in this shitshow of a city, and there’s nowhere else he’d rather be.

He’s a little boy with an idea, and he’s home.


End file.
